to get really fed up with 'milestones'

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"At 11 months, your baby should be cruising around while holding onto the furniture or your hands. He might even let go of your hands to try out a few tentative steps alone. Some babies at this age experiment by standing on their toes or on one leg."
Um. No, doesn't even stand on his own. Or crawl. He bumshuffles.

"As your baby?s hand-eye coordination improves, he?ll enjoy learning how things work by arranging toys by size and color as well as taking them apart and putting them back together."
Oh, no again.

"Your baby should be feeding himself by now, either with fingers or a spoon."
Fingers yes. Spoon, no chance.

"When you name something like the family dog your baby can point at it."
Guess what? No, again!

"Encourage your baby to start becoming more independent while dressing, eating, and getting ready for bed."
?!

So, I know there are variations. But as a first time mum, I find these utterly disheartening and sometimes downright worrying. Everyone says there are ranges, but milestones always seem to be at the more advanced end of 'normal'. Almost every place I see milestones is like this.

AIBU or should they be a bit more aware of the other end of the scale and not scare us so much?

HV can be the worse people concerning worrying parents unnecessarily. Not always, but there are a fair few who are guilty of this!

I'll never forget one asking me if I was sure my baby was taking in any milk when being breastfed (he had lost a tiny amount of weight, that could be accounted for by inaccurate scales), I just replied, 'Well he seems to want to and he has milk round his mouth when he has finished!'

I pointed out that dd was not doing certain things to the HV at 2 I was dismissed dd was diagnosed with a co ordination developmental disorder at 6 I was livid if im honest that I was sent away with a flea in my ear

then again, daftdame, I had exactly the same reaction to a HV, but sadly in our case dd's weight loss persisted and she eventually ended up in hospital with failure to thrive

I was convinced she was worrying unnecessarily. She wasn't.

Proper milestones are useful - as in it could be indicative of a problem if a child is not doing X by Y months. For instance DD was still totally immobile, no crawling, bumshuffling or the vaguest attempt to walk, at 14 months - when I mentioned it to the HV she asked if DD sat up unaided. She was, although she'd left that to the 11th hour as well, so I was reassured that the building blocks were in place, she was just taking her own sweet time to put them all together into getting mobile.

But the book/magazine/website ones are often horrendous, 'children will being doing this [frequently quite unrealistic thing] at this specific age' as in the OP's example. I even saw a poster in a hospital once which cited crawling (can't remember the age) as a milestone, when it's not, as many children simply don't crawl.

cory I still got my son weighed, of course there does come a point where you may have to act. I just don't like the unnecessary worry, admit it is a fine line but in my DS's case it was not time to act.

yes I do see what you mean and of course you were right, daftdame

just still worried by the fact that I very much was not right about dd, and if it hadn't been for the HV's badgering me things might have gone very badly indeed

so I can see that from the HV's pov it's not so simple: they meet the sensible and clued-up parents like yourself and the hide-their-head-in-the-sand parents like me; they can't know from the outside who is who

cory Don't be so hard on yourself. The checks I presume were done, you spoke to the health visitor. You took her into hospital. Things worked out OK.

Well, not terribly ok, daftdame, as there was an underlying health reason which I then took many more years to get properly investigated because once again I was stuffing my fingers in my ears

They are more ok-ish now since dd has become old enough to go on the really heavy painkillers. But I doubt they are doing her much good, and if early intervention could have averted some of her problems, then I wish she had had it. Basically, I feel she has lost out on so much of her childhood due to undiagnosed, untreated pain. Just the ordinary memories that other children have and she doesn't. (and the GCSE's...)

cory The doctors may have done the same, not listened, if you had gone earlier...you just can't say.

Pleased things are better for her now and hope there is continued improvement.

Thing is, I reckon milestones were the things doctors always used and now parents want to know them and have easy access to them on t'internet. And therein lies the problem. We don't know how to interpret them. The milestones never come with a range of ages for example. We don't neccessarily know 'what it means' if our DC don't meet them.

That's what doctors/pediatricians are for imo.

To the poster earlier on, not meeting some milestones on time means nothing without context: you can't possibly know if this means the child will be delayed later .

Of course you are right, daftdame, the same thing might have happened and no point in beating myself up.

But as an argument for paying attention to milestones, I can see that what would have made a difference would have been if somebody had put two and two together and said "ah yes, here we have hypotonia and feeding problems and difficulty in walking and poor balance; this might just be a case for referring to a specialist". All those unreached milestones, if somebody had put them together on a spreadsheet, would have given a fairly good indication as to which specialist we should have seen. Mumsnet could have told me if they had been around at the time.

My DD is nearly 15 months. Can't walk. Can't even stand not holding on to anything. 5 words? We still have babbling and the odd shriek of dadadada. Feed herself? Will use a pre loaded spoon/fork but mainly fingers.

Stupid "milestones" completely agree with you OP. They're great at making first time parents like failures.

To the poster earlier on, not meeting some milestones on time means nothing without context: you can't possibly know if this means the child will be delayed later hmm.

I don't know if that was in response to my post. No you can't predict, but if a child isn't sitting at a year, it can be because of underlying problems, so getting checked out is a good thing. If a child is missing several milestones, then early intervention can help, if the child has problems later on. You can't predict whether the child is going to catch up or whether the delays have other implications (unless a diagnosis is made), but it isn't going to hurt if a child is, for example,referred to SALT because they haven't hit certain speech milestones, and then they catch up later.

The source of those silly milestones was the webMD site, but come across similar all over the place and in book. To pp yeah, I don't read what to expect anymore...

I agree it's important where there really are delays (though ideally the Dr or hv should pick these up surely?) I guess the drip, drip of reading that your child is behind eventually makes you question.

Incidentally, a random stranger the other day insisted ds had to learn to walk for his first birthday in a few weeks . He can barely support himself standing for more than a minute...

Apologies for the typos - I'll blame my phone

They're great at making first time parents like failures.

Have you read Cory's posts? Do you not get it? You will feel an awful lot more like a failure if there is a problem and you ignore it.

Your child may or may not be OK. You can't tell yet. But if later it turns out your child isn't OK you probably will regret ignoring it now.

I certainly do........

I don't know why development milestones would make you feel like a failure. There's absolutely nothing you can do or should do to influence when your child develops.

They should worry you. Which is a pity if there is nothing to worry about - and right if there is something to worry about.

I would say if they're not meeting one or two milestones then there's probably no problem. But if they're not meeting a lot of milestones, well then they do have 'development delay' which may later be refined into all sorts of things.

When my children learnt to walk and talk I thought 'well that's OK then, there's no problem' but it wasn't OK.

Would worrying sooner have helped? Yes. Maybe not at 12 months, but at 4 it would have certainly helped. And if I'd linked what school was saying to late milestones I would have got the right help sooner.......

I don't think worrying ever helps, appropriate action can.

my DS3 had his 1st tooth at the age of 14 and a half month. I was glad he wasn't my first!

I don't think worrying ever helps, appropriate action can.

If I hadn't been worried about ds, I wouldn't have sought out the appropriate help!

Ds is my 3rd, and I had worries and niggles about him from birth, but the concerns I had were masked partly by his horrendous reflux.

When I did talk about it all with my HV and she did an assessment and referred us on, everyone said , 'oh they all get there in the end' 'boys are lazy' 'I expect his sisters do everything for him' etc etc,

I didn't worry about the milestones with dd1 and 2, because I didn't have that underlying worry that something was up. Even when dd2 wasn't walking at 18 months, we saw a physio (because that is the milestone where, if you go past it, it is recommended that you get help) and got supportive shoes, and were assured that it was because of over stretchy ligaments in her ankles, but there were no other worries, and there was no harm done by seeing the physio. The fact that she was a late walker didn't make me feel like a failure, I don't understand why I would.

I just think it is important to remain hopeful...I think holding off from imagining the worse is fine. Take action, but try your best not to worry. Life is too short...

Sometimes it is not about not being hopeful, but being realistic. When you have been told by a developmental paed that your 10 month old is functioning at the level of a 1-3 month old (in a variety of areas) and he is undergoing tests for degenerative and life limiting conditions, someone saying, 'they all get there on the end' or 'well boys are just lazy, he'll catch up' (as many people did) doesn't really help.

Hmm I understand what you were saying, but I have a vastly different experience. We were, quite sternly, warned of all sorts which just has not become a reality. Not saying that at times this was not a very difficult experience...but I'll shut up now.

No, please don't shut up!

Ds has done so well, the tests for degenerative diseases came back negative, he still has delays, and health problems, and we now know that he has a genetic condition.

I suppose what I'm saying is that it was the worries over ds not hitting milestones that was one of the things that spurred me on to ask for help, despite one gp sending me away feeling like a mad, neurotic mother. And I'm so glad that I did, because it meant that ds had access to support and services that he wouldn't have had otherwise.

hazeyjane glad your DS is doing well.